T. Parker - Full Measure

“I am McKenzie,” said one of the girls. “And this is Dulce. We were George’s friends. And this is Cruzela Storm. She has agreed to help us.”

“And their idea is to do a concert and raise the forty-four thousand dollars for the crosswalks,” Evelyn told her husband that evening as they checked the news on the kitchen TV and did the dinner prep.

“Cruzela Storm could sell out Warrior Stadium in a second flat,” he said. Brian was a rocker by heart but an accountant by trade, and Evelyn’s tireless partner in Anders Wealth Management. She knew that not every fifty-year-old accountant would know of Cruzela Storm, but Brian would, certainly. He had a collection of guitars, mostly electric and vintage and valuable. He played them with voluble abandon through a large Marshall in their music room — den. And of course he had thousands of recordings and high-end audio gear to play them on. “Let me get that new one of hers.”

Still an unrepentant CD listener, Brian came back a moment later with the jewel case and put the disc into the player. He turned off the TV and cranked the music to his usual level of too loud. Evelyn thought the opening guitar riff was dire and slightly head-banging, but when Cruzela Storm’s voice kicked in, it was low, pure, and somehow honeylike. Evelyn looked at the picture on the CD cover: Cruzela Storm looked like Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner, but with crazy copper hair instead of crazy white hair, all eyes and makeup. Nothing like she had looked in Evelyn’s office.

“I like this bass line,” said Brian.

“How much should tickets cost?” asked Evelyn. “If Cruzela Storm played at the stadium?”

“Her audience is older because she’s relatively sophisticated — twenties and thirties, I’d say.”

“Older? Twenties? God, what happened to us?”

“Hey, hot stuff, I got ten years on you and I’m not complaining.”

“That’s sickening,” said Ethan, heading for the fridge with half a smile. Ethan was thirteen, taller than his father and still growing, currently in size eleven shoes. He enjoyed castigating his parents but Evelyn rarely saw meanness in him.

“Get out of there,” said Evelyn. “Dinner’s in half an hour.”

“Cruzela Storm is cool,” said Ethan, tearing off a package of string cheese. “What does she look like in person?”

“She’s tall and shy,” said Evelyn. “She has beautiful pale skin. She’s not exactly pretty. But she’s... striking.”

“I’d pay twenty to see her, but only for good seats.” Ethan dropped the plastic sleeve into the wastebasket and walked out.

“Times two thousand at Warrior Stadium, if you put up chairs,” said Evelyn. “That’s forty grand right there. Then there’s concessions, donations, raffles. Forty-four thousand? Easy. Lighted crosswalks — presto.”

Evelyn drank some wine, thinking. She slid the sautéed pancetta, then the peas and olive oil, into the pan of bow tie noodles and started mixing. Cruzela Storm sang. “I think it’s really more than cool of Cruzela Storm to help us build two new crosswalks,” she said. “But why wasn’t that little boy’s life enough? Why did the people of his own town have to tell his family his life wasn’t enough?”

“Because Fallbrook is full of racist pigs,” said Gwen, following in her brother’s footsteps to the refrigerator. She had her mother’s thick dark hair, which she wore straight to her shoulders. “Cruzela Storm is half-Mexican, for your information. That’s why she’s going to sing. If George Hernandez had been white you wouldn’t need Cruzela Storm. We’d have crosswalks leading to the crosswalks.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Evelyn.

Gwen dropped the string cheese wrapper into the trash and bit the stick in half. “You can ask Cade Magnus if it’s true, now that he’s back in town.”

“There are thirty thousand other people in this city besides Cade Magnus,” said Brian.

“Yes. Half of them agree with him, and the other half are afraid of him.”

“That rings true in my heart, Gwen,” said her mother. “And I’m ashamed of it. My own city council. And Magnus wasn’t even there when we voted.”

“Oh, he was there, Mom. Just invisible, like biological warfare. Like his dad.”

“Aren’t you a cheerful little girl?”

Ethan ambled back into the kitchen, tapping a pencil on his leg. “Cade Magnus just wants fame. It’s the creepy losers he attracts that you have to watch out for. When’s dinner?”

“I’d pay fifty dollars to see Cruzela Storm,” said Gwen. “If I had fifty dollars.”

“Tell you what,” said her father. “If Cruzela Storm plays in Fallbrook, I’ll buy us all good seats. Good singer, good songwriter, and a worthy cause.”

Gwen glowered at her mother and walked out in her usual shoulders-forward, head-down kind of slouch. Ethan swiped an apple off the counter and followed her out.

“Can we leave our children with friends for a couple years and take a vacation?” Evelyn asked.

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“When I was in Rice Canyon today it made me think of Pala Casino. The hotel room, actually.” She looked up at him with a small smile.

“With two child-free years we can do better than an Indian casino.”

“Somewhere with room service and a good view of something.”

Brian poured her a little more wine, then another full glass for himself, and Evelyn saw the darkness cross his face. She had always loved his easy optimism but in the last couple of years she’d seen the growing frustration in him that he tried to tamp down with alcohol.

“Archie and Patrick Norris came by today for a big-picture look at where they stand,” said Brian. “What a mess.” He synopsized their plight. “And the Farm Credit Bank won’t loan for replacement trees. So we sold off some of their retirement investments that had finally come back since the crash. That was a breakeven. And some of the second-issue REITs we got them into — I had to dump them on the secondary market at a loss. That hurt. Evie? I’m getting really tired of watching our friends and clients take our advice then lose what they’ve worked for. The crash, the jobs, the drought, the freeze. Now the fire. It feels... endless.”

“It’s going to turn, honey,” was the best she could come up with. She suddenly felt exhausted.

He drank. “But the good news is I paid our fed and state quarterlies today,” he said.

“The ones due back in September?”

“Those very ones,” he said softly. “We’ll fall within the penalty grace period. Not worried.”

“Did you have to raid the college account?”

Brian studiously did not look at her. “Yeah. And I sold three Gibsons and two Gretsches to replenish it. The Hummingbird. Ouch. But it’s okay. How many guitars does one middle-aged bean counter really need?”

She came over and kissed his lips lightly and lay her head against his chest. “It’s going to turn, baby. For all of us.”

Patrick, Ted, and Archie walked the reeking groves, trying to guess which of the damaged trees might live and which would die. Archibald said that if there was a blessing in this fire it was the speed of it, leaving, possibly, a number of trees still alive. By spring they would see new growth on the survivors, few as they might be. Those without life by April they would cut off at the ground and Norris Brothers would try again to get a Farm Credit Bank loan for replacement trees. Archie said if God smiled on them, which He rarely did anymore, half of the trees were still alive and would make it. A harvest from those trees was three years out now, but if spring showed at least half them alive, the bank would loan. The bank would have to loan on forty acres of good Haas avocados.